


Silence isn't better

by LMX



Category: Snowpiercer (2013)
Genre: Blood, Cannibalism, Gen, POV Original Character, Pre-Canon, Starvation, violence involving a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2015-01-03
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:08:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3105065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been weeks since they've eaten, and they're all of them - adults and children - getting weaker. Most of the really tiny ones have stopped crying now, and there's nothing good about the silence that comes after, not even as a kind of relief.</p>
<p>It's rare that anyone needs to act to shut a child up - you know if you wait long enough they'll go quiet same as the others - but it only takes one psycho to set something worse into motion. Andre just didn't think he'd know the guy personally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence isn't better

**Author's Note:**

> This is *not* what I was planning on writing. Bad brain. No cookie.

The kid was crying again.

It was nothing loud, but then no one had the energy for loud right now, not even the adults who had enough fat to keep them going.

It wasn't even particularly high like the babies had been (back when babies crying was a thing. Even newborns don't last more than a few days now), just the persistent grating cry of someone too young to express why this situation was the worst and why wasn't someone doing something about it?

Andre didn't blame him, there were plenty of adults around doing the same, it was just... the adults were less grating. He wondered if it was a biological imperative thing - baby crying, must act to preserve the gene pool.

"Will you shut the fucking kid up?" Carl demanded sharply, Portuguese picking his voice out from the general hubbub. The three of them were going to have their work cut out with Carl today, Andre just knew it. He wasn't easy to keep tamped down on a good day, and they hadn't had a good day since Diego and Sofia died.

The gunfight had kicked off when the guards came to take away the last of the food and the drink, and they'd ended up taking just about everything they could lay their hands on, leaving them with a carriage littered with dead and dying train jumpers. 'Tail sectioners', that's what the guards had called them. Told them they hadn't deserved anything they hadn't paid for, and ignored anyone who told them the things they were taking had mostly been brought on board in peoples' bags.

The tail sectioners had managed to break into a water line since, but the meagre ration of metallic tasting water that a handful of people had taken to guarding and carefully metering out wasn't going to sustain anyone for long.

Andre didn't like to think too hard about what would happen when it stopped being enough. When that damned kid *stopped* crying, and they didn't have to wonder when it would start again.

"Make him stop!" Carl shouted again, and there was the sound of him getting to his feet, layers of coats and trousers mostly stolen from the dead making his every movement cumbersome and noisy. Still, he was away from their little section before anyone else had thought to move, crossing the carriage and shoving aside hung coats and pretend walls as Ramon and Tijal scrambled to chase after him.

He was shouting in English now, and a couple of people were telling him to quieten down and go lay back down. Leave the kid be, he won't be crying for much longer.

Carl tried French and Chinese, and while Andre knew the French was mangled (stop to go child!), he didn't know enough Chinese to know whether what he was saying meant anything or if he was just making racist noises he thought sounded right. Fucking idiot. He still didn't get any response, but the kid's crying sounded more muffled suddenly, like he was being pressed against someone's chest.

Andre should get up, chase after Carl with the others.

He used to be the leader of their little rabble, Andre had been the one to drag them out to meet this hell-on-Earth train when it became obvious that nowhere on Earth proper was going to survive the snowpocalypse, not even Manaus. They'd joked that Carl should be used to the new climate when the temperatures started to drop - wasn't he from Canada or somewhere? The American had never explained how he'd ended up living in Brazil, not even after the world ended, but he'd always been a fucking psycho, even when they'd been well fed and just trying to stay out of the way of the LEOs back home. Andre had suspicions about what he was running from, but what did it matter when the equator was freezing around them.

They were starving now, and tired. Andre had given up the last of his secret stash of cereal bars a week ago when Tijal had admitted she was pregnant, and she hadn't told anyone yet, and how do you even make a baby with no food, damnit? Somehow going after Carl seemed like too much effort to manage.

Fuck, another baby in this place, screaming for food, was going to make a hellish situation worse, but the chances were there wasn't going to be a baby at all and it just made Andre hurt inside.

A female voice screamed something wordless, and Andre was spurred into action as Carl cackled like some TV witch. The screaming from the kid had gone from mournful to terrified, and Andre pushed into the next carriage where a short man in glasses was trying to pull the kid out of Carl's hands. The kid was maybe two or three, not a baby but small enough that Carl could keep him off the floor with one hand while he pushed the other man away. There was a woman on the ground, bleeding from the temple, and Andre was *furious* all of a sudden.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" he demanded across the space, shoving a couple more onlookers aside. They were gathering a crowd, and Carl was going to get himself shanked if he hurt a baby in front of a crowd this big.

"Some kids," Carl announced, and fuck he had his knife out, what the fuck? "Some kids gotta learn the hard way."

Across the other side of the carriage, Ramon was holding Tijal back, and Andre couldn't get past the crowd fast enough. The kid went silent as his father - or at least Andre assumed it was, hell, maybe it was just a bystander trying to do right by the kid - was knocked to the ground alongside the unconscious woman, and even as he surged back up Carl had taken the knife...

"Fuck!" Andre shouted, without any real action or intent beyond an expression of his shock as Carl pressed the kid to the ground, pried his mouth open and *cut*.

The arc of blood was almost as shocking as the action itself, and the man on the ground was throwing himself at Carl, mindless of the knife still in his hand, only to be knocked back just as easily the second time.

The mother was gathering the bloody, choking child to herself with clumsy movements as Carl stood over the family, the crowd silent and unacting. With an air of contempt, Carl turned to the gathered passengers, a tiny bloody tongue in his fingers.

"You all hear me?" he asked in English. "You keep 'em quiet." As if to emphasise his point, he put that tiny piece of flesh in his mouth and ate it.

Andre's stomach would have rebelled at the sight if he hadn't been two weeks, nearly three, without food. Instead, and to his utter mortification, his mouth started to water.

The crowd hadn't dispersed, still looking between the kid and Carl with an expression that Andre hated to think might be hunger, and Carl stood, triumphant, as the woman fought to drag the kid and the unconscious man both under the dubious cover of their coat-lined square of floor.

Andre made it to Carl's side as people started to move away, still wary of the knife he was never sure wouldn't be turned on him. "What have you done, man?" he asked. Carl walked back towards their carriage with his head held high, the crowd parting in front of him. Andre watched him go in the sudden devastating quiet. "What have you done?"


End file.
